


A Good Chance

by QHQ



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 01:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8777809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QHQ/pseuds/QHQ
Summary: Eponine and R grew up together, in a twisted sort of way. But then, they fall in with Les Amis and things seem okay again. Until one day Marius shows up with his new girlfriend in tow, forcing them to reevaluate and come to terms with their past.





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> So the tags have a bunch of trigger warnings in them, but really, aside from Enjolras being a bit of an obtuse asshole (only some of the time) most of them aren't really discussed that much.

R ran away from home the first time when he was ten.  
He doesn’t like to talk about why.  
He meets Cosette two weeks later, in his corner of the park. He scowls at her, trying to scare her off.  
“Get out.” He says crossly. “This is my corner.”  
She looks up, her eyes large and watering. “Please don’t make me leave,”  
Turns out Grantaire can’t say no to a crying child.

 

He and Cosette live together in his makeshift shelter for weeks. He slowly coaxes out of her shell a bit. He learns that she’s eight years old. He learns that she was in a foster home, but they beat her. She tells him that she had to clean for their motel, and that they had daughters her age.  
The younger one would slap her, or trip her when she was carrying big piles of laundry. The older one would just ignore her.  
He tells her that his parents would hit him whenever he looked at a boy. Would force him to read bible verses while standing on tiptoe, or kneel on grains of rice.  
They steal food from dumpsters and bodegas, and sleep curled up in a ball at night.

 

One day, R gets back to the shelter to find two girls awaiting him.  
“This is Eponine.” is all Cosette says, and that’s that.  
Late that night he hears Eponine tearfully apologizing to Cosette.

 

They live like that, a warped image of the nuclear family, for almost a year, before Grantaire is caught by a police officer, stealing from a bodega. 

 

They send him back to his parents.


	2. Chapter II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this??? An update only one day later??? This probably won't continue. Thanks for the kudos!

Before, he learns, it wasn’t nearly so bad.  
Tiny ten-year-old R telling his mother that he likes boys better than girls has nothing on sixteen-year old R, who’s caught kissing Peter Ettinger behind the dumpsters at school.  
This time, when he runs away, he vows he won’t be caught again.

 

He returns to his corner of the park, hoping against hope that somehow, they will still be there.  
The shelter is still standing, and when he crawls inside, there is still a nest of blankets. He curls up and falls asleep waiting for the girls to get back.

 

He’s woken by Eponine’s voice, still high and wavering. “Get out. I have a gun and I’m not afraid to use it.” He manages to roll over carefully to see that she really is pointing a gun at his chest.  
“R?”   
And suddenly she’s leaping at him, and he has an armful of Eponine, and for a moment everything feels okay again.  
“Where’s Cosette?”

 

She tells him that Cosette had been caught and returned to her parents shortly after R had. She tells him that she went back to look for her, but Cosette wasn’t there.  
And late at night, when they’re curled together in the cold, she whispers that she’s afraid Cosette is dead.

 

They learn how to make actual money this time, instead of stealing from bodegas.They hang out on street corners together, running from cops, and sucking dicks for five bucks a go.   
They meet Montparnasse, who offers them an actual apartment in return for joining his ragtag gang of prostitutes.  
Within a month, R has saved up enough for a crappy little sketchbook and some pencils.  
The first thing he draws is Cosette, as he remembers her. Belly full after a particularly successful day of scavenging, laughing at something he’d just said.  
They tack it onto the wall, and greet her every time they walk in the door.

 

Slowly things start going less and less well.

 

Montparnasse starts demanding they take more difficult customers, for less and less money. R argues that they won’t survive without that money, but Montparnasse just slaps him on the ass and says that there’s no reason to need any more than they make, because they don’t pay him rent.  
The first time someone ties R up and hits him, before fucking him without proper preparation, he returns home to Eponine and spends the night curled in her arms, crying softly.  
Things only get worse from there.


	3. Chapter III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one???? There are so many things I should be doing right now, and none of them are this.

Several years pass, and they’re now twenty, still caught in Montparnasse’s web.

 

One day he announces that he’s moving the whole operation out east to New York City. Eponine and Grantaire are packed up and shipped off with everything else.  
They bring Cosette’s picture with them.

 

Their new deal in New York doesn’t seem so bad. Their apartment is still shitty, and they still spend their nights catering to customers with less than vanilla intentions, but they’ve learned how to handle it by now.  
Secretly, R manages to get a job as a barista in a coffee shop all the way across town, the Musain. 

 

Less than a week later, he’s working a shift when a group of students from NYU comes in and takes over the place.  
His co-worker Joanna assures him that this is normal, they come in to meet twice every week, usually scaring the rest of the afternoon rush off.  
“We don’t care, though,” she tells him. “They buy more than enough coffee to make up for the deficit in customers.”  
Joanna likes using fancy language.  
Listening to their leader, R slowly falls in love. Listening to him speak for hours about the discrimination that minorities face, even in cities as liberal as NYC, is like listening to a younger, handsomer, Ian Mckellan read Shakespeare.  
It doesn’t hurt that his Apollo (Enjolras, his name is Enjolras) is extraordinarily beautiful.

 

Staring in the mirror that night, Grantaire decides that at best, he is rakish. The double scars running through his eyebrow certainly add a pirate-ish charm, but mostly his face is just a combination of eyes that are set too far back in his face, lips that are too big, and a child-like innocence in the way he looks.  
That’s most of what his draw for customers is, that childishness. He’s often forced to call his patrons daddy.

 

As the weeks go on and the group continues to meet every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, R finds it harder and harder to hold his tongue.  
The group is so painfully optimistic about the world, and what they’re going to do, how they’re going to change it.  
The only one with an even vaguely realistic idea of how things work is the studious one with glasses and sleeve tattoos (his tattoos are beautiful. R’s had plenty of time to study them as he hands coffee and change over the counter to him. One sleeve is done in planets and stars, and the other has scientific drawing of moths), Combeferre.  
Sadly, Combeferre rarely speaks during these meetings, preferring instead to take notes in the corner.

 

More than a month has gone past when he finally loses it. Enjolras is going on and on about the good they’re going to do with their upcoming petition campaign, and next thing he knows, R has said, rather loudly, “You know your little petition isn’t actually gonna change anything, right?”  
All the eyes in the room swivel to focus on him, and he suddenly feels as though he’s naked under a spotlight.  
“What. Do you mean.” Enjolras says slowly, eyebrows raised in what is clearly a challenge.  
So off Grantaire goes, arguing through every point that Enjolras has made in the past week, pointing out holes in the plan, and reinforcing the inherent laziness of humans.  
By the end of his impromptu speech, Enjolras has returned to his seat, frantically trying to reform his plans, and the rest of the assembled Les Amis are staring at him in shock.  
He just shakes his head and punches out for the day.


	4. Chapter IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an essay due tomorrow. I'm fucked.

Things continue on in relentless repetition for almost a year until finally, finally, Grantaire spies a way out.

He still works at the Musain during the day, and for Montparnasse at night.

But now he's been invited to spend his shifts sitting at a table with Les Amis during their meetings. He sits in the corner, keeping his opinions to himself (mostly) and sketching pictures of them.  
Them. Who is he kidding. At least half of the drawings are of Enjolras.   
He only speaks up when Enjolras' enthusiasm or optimism begins to get out of hand. It soon becomes his role in the group, the cynic who pokes holes in their arguments.

The way out comes in the form of hapless, gullible Marius, who's moving in with his girlfriend, Euphrasie.  
Grantaire can't hep but feel awful for the poor girl, with a name like Euphrasie. Hopefully she has a good nickname.  
Regardless, he's moving out of his apartment and Jehan is in need of a new roommate.  
That same day he learns that Joanna's sister has died, and she's moving back to Oregon to take care of her parents.

He rushes home to Eponine and convinces her, over a cheap bottle of vodka, to apply for the empty position.

Jehan looks at him a bit strangely when he asks if they'd be okay with two (assuredly platonic) people living together in one room, but just shrugs and asks if they can move in before the end of the week.

They move in on a Wednesday, sneaking their shit out when Montparnasse was sleeping off his hangover.  
They splurge on a new mattress, so they don't have to explain why they share a bed.  
Eponine starts work the following Monday.  
They keep Cosette's picture hanging by the door to their room.  
They still greet her every time they walk in.


	5. Chapter V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five chapters in one day, and barely one and a half paragraphs of my essay. I am just winning at life.

Time wears on and Enjolras gets less and less accepting of Grantaire’s presence in his group.   
His rebuttals to R’s (admittedly pessimistic) points get steadily more barbed and slowly less about the actual point that R has made  
It doesn’t help that R never goes far without a bottle of something at his elbow.

 

In early December, Eponine spots Montparnasse.  
She doesn’t think that he sees her, but she still spends the rest of the day wandering in the exact opposite direction of their apartment, carefully practicing every trick she ever learned to drop a trail.   
The next day R goes to Bahorel and asks him to teach him how to fight.  
Grantaire starts bringing Eponine to meetings with him, mostly for some company in the miserable cynic corner.  
He doesn’t foresee that she’ll fall terribly, completely in love with Marius.  
It’s about then that the miserable cynic corner starts to morph into the drunk bastard corner.

 

“Honestly Grantaire, what is your problem?” R had been particularly bad at holding his tongue that night. “Do you believe in nothing?”   
R considers giving the honest answer, but in the end all he says is “I believe that you’re going about this the wrong way.”  
“Then tell me how you would do it!” Enjolras yells.  
And so he does.

 

It marks a turning point in their relationship. They start working together instead of arguing, and slowly the sad bastard corner turns into a hub of activity.

 

That is, until Enjolras announces his next cause.  
Prostitution.

 

Enjolras approaches it with the same enthusiasm he does everything, explaining to his huddled masses that prostitution is bad, and that women who sell their bodies just don’t know better. “We aren’t educating the populace on safe ways to earn money, to get food!” he keeps repeating, righteous fury blazing in his eyes.  
Grantaire tries to keep his mouth shut for as long as he can, before finally blurting. “Oh my god, check your privilege, dude!” and walking out.

 

He may have been a tad dramatic.


	6. Chapter VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. They cancelled school tomorrow, so at least I have an excuse to not be writing my essay right now.

But, because he is pathetic, the next meeting finds Grantaire in his usual corner, Eponine at his side, and a drink in his hand.  
One drink slowly turns to many, but he manages to keep his mouth shut through all of Enjolras’s fabulous plans to educate the poor, confused prostitutes as to just how bad their lives are.  
At the end of the meeting, they pack up and go home, R drinks even more, and then he goes to bed.  
Rinse and repeat.

 

Several weeks pass before Enjolras corners him as he’s trying to leave. “I could use your insight,” he says. “You barely say anything anymore.”  
R mumbles something incoherent and stumbles away.  
He misses the worried look that lingers on Enjolras’s face long after he’s left.

 

One day, right at the beginning of a meeting (Eponine isn’t there for this one. R thinks it’s going to be torture) Marius walks in and introduces his girlfriend, Euphrasie.  
R doesn’t bother to join the cloud of introductions, too engrossed in peeling the label off of his first beer of the night.  
And then Coufeyrac asks if her name is really, seriously Euphrasie and she responds lightly, “Yeah, it is. But you can call me Cosette.” that R’s head snaps up.  
And it’s her, she’s here, right in front of him.  
She’s alive.


	7. Chapter VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I'm a terrible person. Maybe one day I'll learn to update like a normal writer.  
> Most of this chapter centers around a panic attack, so if that's not something you feel up to reading, here's the general gist of it: Cosette vaguely recognizes R, but can't remember from where, R feels a panic attack coming on and runs away, but Enj finds him and helps him get through it, then offers to drive R home.

He shoots to his feet, remarkably sober for once, and pushes his way to the front of the room, accidentally knocking Feuilly to the ground on his way. He reaches her and just stares for a moment. She looks so happy.

She’s short and plump and wearing sunglasses pushed back on her head and a little flowery dress. Somehow, she must have managed to break free of the life that had sunk its claws so deeply into Eponine and R. Somehow, she came out of the whole thing sane and healthy. If Grantaire wasn’t so deeply relieved to see her, he might have been envious. Cosette blinks up at him. “Sorry, do I know you?”

All Grantaire can force out is a strained “Um...I…”

She smiles, and it’s still the same smile that’s still hanging on the wall next to the door in his and Ep’s room. Embarrassingly, he can feel tears trying to force their way out of his eyes. He needs to leave. Cosette doesn’t recognize him and what is he gonna tell Eponine and he needs to leave right now. 

“Sorry, it’s just you look very familiar…” But R is already shoving his way past her, out the door, along the street, around the corner and into an alleyway where no one else is, where he can sit on the ground and try to breathe because holy fuck, Cosette is alive.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, gasping for breath, with some mixture of snot and tears drying on his face when suddenly, strangely, Enjolras is there. 

Enjolras is on the ground. Enjolras is kneeling on the ground. Enjolras is kneeling on the ground, tentatively reaching out to him and asking if he can touch him. 

He doesn’t remember telling it to, but hs head is nodding up and down and somehow Enjolras is slowly pulling him forwards into his arms, probably getting the ungodly combination on R’s face all over his shirt.

“R, can you hear me?”

He manages to nod.

“Good, that’s really good. Can you feel me breathing?”

 

Again, he nods against Enjolras’ chest.

“Okay, do you think you can try and breath with me?”

R doesn’t know whether or not he can do that. 

“I’m gonna count to four, and I want you to try and breath in for the whole four counts. Can you do that for me?”

R doesn’t really do anything, but Enjolras is counting anyways, in his slow, deep, measured voice, and Grantaire shakily manages a breath that lasts almost as long as the four count.

Gradually, Enjolras keeps counting with him until his breathing is normal again, and then he’s pushing the hair back from R’s face, tying it in a hairband he must have taken from his own wrist.

“Do you want to talk about what happened? It’s okay if you don’t want to, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Grantaire shakes his head. The last thing he wants to do is tell Enjolras what’s going on. He doesn’t want to become another cause. Instead he reaches into his back pocket for his phone and discovers that he must’ve left it on the table inside. Well, it’s not like he’s going back in for it. 

“Can you drive me home?”

He would just bus, but he doesn’t think he can make it on his own right now, and it’s not like he can just call a Lyft. 

“Of course. Are you ready to go now?” He nods and starts to clamber to his feet, Enjolras waiting patiently by his elbow.


	8. Chapter VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I suck. Sorry.

Enjolras pulls up in front of his apartment building, before swivelling in his seat to face Grantaire. 

“Is Eponine home?”

Pulling in a deep breath, R manages a shaky. “Yeah, she should be.”

“Can I walk you up anyway?” What the hell is even happening tonight.

But R always has been and always will be pathetic, so he just nods and clambers out of the car, surreptitiously wiping his eyes when Enjolras can’t see him.

The elevator stopped working a few months ago, and the spend the walk up to the apartment in silence, made awkward by the heavy breathing that sets in somewhere around the fifth floor.

R doesn’t know what to do when the reach his door, so he gesticulates lamely with his arms and Enjolras takes it as an invitation to come in.

He walks into the kitchen like he belongs there, and starts cajoling Jehan’s cranky old stove into lighting, so he can put the kettle on.

R turns around without saying anything and walks into his and Ep’s room, dumping his bag by the door. He had intended to head back out and check in with Enjolras, but Eponine’s sitting on her mattress, furiously scribbling in her notebook, and when he sees her it’s all he can do not to collapse on top of her.

He settles instead for flopping bonelessly next to her and, when she sets her notebook aside, curling into her embrace. He can smell the slightly sharp scent of her Alberto VO5 shampoo (79 cents a bottle, the best bargain he’s ever found) and cigarette smoke, and somehow it’s the combination he needed to slow his heart down, to start feeling human again.

“I saw her,” he can feel her go stiff. “I saw her and she’s so happy and, and…” and if he keeps talking he’ll start crying again. 

“Her,” Eponine’s voice is too sharp, like she’s fighting to keep it from cracking. “You mean Cosette.”

“Yeah,” He swallows thickly. “I saw her, Eponine. I found her. She’s alive, and she’s so happy, she looks so perfect I-”

“R?” Enjolras is standing in the doorway, with a mug in his hands. “Sorry, I made you some tea,” he thrusts the mug out in front of him, almost defensively.

“Thanks,” he manages to wiggle out of Eponine’s hold and reach out and grab it before flopping down next to her again. He carefully sips the tea, trying not to spill on himself. It’s the perfect temperature, peppermint with no honey. When did Enjolras learn how he likes his tea? Eponine’s finger are carding through his hair, and it feels heavenly and...and Enjolras is still standing in the doorway, studying the portrait of Cosette.

“I’ll just be going then,” Enjolras is shifting from foot to foot. If Grantaire didn’t know better, he’d say Enjolras looks nervous.

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alberto VO5 really is only 79 cents a bottle. And it works well too.


	9. Chapter XI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What??? An update??? Like eight months later??? I have no excuses, sorry. Thanks to archive user themortalwarrior for reminding me that this thing even exists. Don't hate me?

He’s vaguely aware of Enjolras’s exit. Eponine ushers him out then promptly returns and plops down in front of Grantaire. He cradles the mug closer to his chest, and Eponine just waits.

“I saw her.” He swallows again, and for several moments, that’s all he’s able to say. 

Eponine waits.

“I saw her...Marius...she…” and suddenly it rushes back to him. Eponine’s in love with Marius. And Marius is in love with Cosette. And Cosette is alive. How can he do this without breaking her heart?

“Marius’s girlfriend, Euphrasie,” why can’t he form a sentence that doesn’t make him sound drunk? For once, he is shockingly, bracingly too sober. 

“Cosette...Euphrasie,” and no, that didn’t make any sense either. Somewhat detachedly, he realizes that his hands are shaking and the tea is slopping all over his knuckles. He needs to pull himself together. He sets the tea down with a dull clunk and stands. He shoves his hands into his pockets in an attempt to still them and hunches his shoulders up towards his ears.

“Marius’s new girlfriend, Euphrasie. She’s Cosette.” It’s as coherent as he can make it. Luckily, Eponine has years of experience translating his drunken ramblings and gets the point.

He sees the heartbreak in her eyes, but moments later he sees her force it back. They’ve learned this together, that certain repression of feelings. That’s what he’s gotten them through this whole mess. 

“And she looks good, right? You said she looked happy.”

He sniffles a little bit. “Yeah. She looked so happy. She made it out. Somehow.” She would have never survived to adulthood with the Thenardiers. Eponine’s little brother hadn’t.

They’d gone to check on him when they were about seventeen. In some fucked up way they thought they could rescue him. They thought that they would be capable of caring for a child. There was no sign of him anywhere. Her little sister, Azelma was still there. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t seem like she was in danger either, so they let her be. 

Eponine and R had spent hours at the local library skimming through the internet, searching desperately for a record of a Gavroche Thenardier. They’d been so hopeful, then. Thought he’d been adopted out. Images of a halfway decent family floated through their heads. Then one day, just before close, they found a footnote on some sort of legal form that marked his death. Supposedly, he had fallen down the stairs and hit his head.

He shook himself out of his reminiscence. There was nothing to be done for Gavroche now. Eponine was on her feet now. 

“I want to see her. What did she say?”

“She didn’t recognize me.”

“What?” Eponine seems angry for some reason. “How could she not recognize you? We lived together for, like, a year!” He gets it. Her anger. She made herself not be angry that Cosette and Marius are together, but that anger had to go somewhere. Eponine’s anger never just dissipated. It could warp or change, but it never entirely left her.

“And she was eight. And I was ten. She thought I looked familiar, but I bolted out of there before she could get a closer look”.

They’re still standing, on either side of the door to their room, and Cosette’s portrait hangs between them. He hates when symbolism shows up in his life like this. Makes it feel like a fucking movie or something, and he knows that he’s not the type to get a Hollywood ending.

In the background, they hear Jehan getting home, tossing his keys in the little dish by the door, toeing out of his boots. He knocks on their closed door.

“Hey R, you okay?”

“Yeah Jehan, I’m fine”. His voice sounds miraculously back to normal.

He and Eponine don’t say anything else. There’s a weird tension between them. Their next soonest opportunity to see her will be the next meeting. Assuming she even shows up. All that’s left to do, in an anticlimactic end to the day, is to get ready for bed and go to sleep. And so they do.


	10. Chapter X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For once, a reliable update. Don't get used to it.

Cosette is very happy. It feels underwhelming to put it that way, but she is. Things with Marius have been going well, and they’re even talking about moving in together next semester. He father will be down to visit next month, and she has a new job at the library that she absolutely loves. 

When Marius asks if she wants to come along to one of those meetings he’s alway going to and meet his friends, her happiness just grows. This is how things are meant to be, she thinks. 

“And it’ll be so much more than just meeting everyone! You’ll get to see how the meetings go too! We talk about important issues and do fundraisers and events to raise awareness for them, and…” Given the opportunity, Marius can talk for hours on end about his social activism group. She thinks she loves him for it. 

One of these days she’ll have to decide for sure. Whether or not she loves him. She thinks she does, but she’s always had a hard time distinguishing love from general fondness. She knows she loves her father, but she isn’t sure about much other love. She thinks she could love Marius, though.

So when Thursday rolls around, she walks hand in hand with Marius to the subway, and then again from their stop to the little cafe where they all meet. It’s called the Musain, she thinks, and she’s never been there before. It’s on a side of town that she doesn’t venture into too much, mostly because it’s inconvenient. It’s on the opposite side of her university from her apartment, and none of her usual coffee shops or grocery stores are over here. 

She walks in, and it turns out that Marius has told them all that her name is Euphrasie. He finds her birth name to be more romantic, or something, so he always introduces her that way. It irritates her somewhat, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not too hard to get people to use her nickname. No one (except Marius, apparently) likes to try and wrestle the oddness of saying Euphrasie into a casual conversation. 

One of Marius’s best friends, Courfeyrac, she thinks, asks her if her name is really, seriously Euphrasie, with the face of sympathy you could only get from a guy named Courfeyrac. She confirms it, and then there’s some guy looming up out of the corner to stare at her. He’s a little short, with broad shoulders and a childish face. Something about him looks achingly familiar, but she can’t seem to place it. 

His mouth shapes her name, Cosette, but he doesn’t make any noise.

“Sorry, do I know you?” She really thinks she does, knows that she knows him.

But her words seem to break whatever fragile stillness has a hold of them, and he sucks in a huge breath of air, then runs from the cafe.

Things are weird after that. Their leader, Enjolras, politely excuses himself.

“I’d love to get to know you a little better some time, Cosette, but I think I should go check on Grantaire now.”

A positively ginormous man pulls his friend off the floor, and everyone looks around at each other, a little in shock for a minute. Then the same man flings himself back into his seat and takes a swig from his beer.

“Well that was fun. I’m Bahorel.”

The tension breaks. Everyone swirls by and introduces themselves, and then she’s swept up and deposited into a chair and given a pint of whatever crappy beer they’re all drinking. The night is bright and happy and warm, in a way that she associates with the earliest days spent in her father’s house. Back when it all felt too good to last.

Before she knows it, she and Marius are making their excuses and he’s walking her to her train stop. Usually she would just stay at his apartment for the night, but she needs some stuff from hers for her classes tomorrow.

She doesn’t sleep well that night. She’s plagued with dreams of before. She doesn’t remember too much. There was R and Ep, she knows, and she remembers how miserable she was at the motel. That’s about it. And it bothers her. She knows the memories are right there, just out of reach, and if she could only access them maybe she could work through them and finally stop having nights like these.

But for the moment, all she can do is make herself a mug of ovaltine and her most comforting book and hope, against all hope, that sleep is coming soon.


End file.
